Spreading the Local Love
Local stores, restaurants, and cafés have an increase in sales during holidays. Valentine’s Day is no different for these businesses.
The last minute shoppers, and gift hunters are great customers, and supporters for places like the Chess Piece Café in downtown Fredericton.
Patti Hollenberg, the owner of the local café says holidays are always busy because of last minute shoppers. This is a great time for them to get first time customers.
“We always have people that are a little preemptive and place orders ahead of time, but I would say 80% of the time it’s just costumers who walk through the door [last minute],” says Hollenberg.
She spends most of her time before major holidays in the kitchen of the Chess Piece, preparing cakes, macarons, cookies, and plenty of other sweets for unprepared holiday shoppers. She hopes customers will enjoy these sweets as a family during times like Christmas, or just to share with their sweet on Valentines.
This year the Chess Piece is spreading their love by raising money when they sell macarons. Hollenberg and her café have partnered up with United Way and their campaign, so for every box of a dozen macarons sold a two-dollar profit will go to the united way.
She says, “We have partnered up with the United Way during their show your local love campaign for the year and were doing monthly specials to switch it up every month.”
Hollenberg sees an increase during the holidays and thrives on local shoppers. Without the local support she wouldn’t be able to stay open. So it’s very important she gets people like Andrea, a down town shopper and local shop supporter, to help her stay open.
“I really like [shopping locally] because I love seeing local talent through the businesses. You don’t always get that through the department store, you don’t see any artisan stuff or really anything that catches your eye just by regular things, but when you go to a local business you can really find character and integrity there; I like that a lot,” says Andrea.
Hollenberg has been open for five years and hopes for more, but with last minute shoppers during the holidays, and local shop supporters, she is guaranteed to stay open for years to come.
